SF voters could see 39 — yes, 39! — city ballot measures

Supervisor Scott Wiener speaks about the new initiatives to keep the city clean through a group of fix-it teams, who will serve individual neighborhoods, at a press conference in San Francisco, California, on Thursday, May 19, 2016.

Supervisor Scott Wiener speaks about the new initiatives to keep...

When it comes to ballot initiatives, San Francisco’s politicians are like gardeners who neglect the weeding and end up with a jungle.

Voters are potentially facing 39 city ballot measures in November. Seven are public initiatives, two are regional bonds, and another two were proposed by City College and the Ethics Commission. The rest — 28 — are from the mayor and supervisors.

Those elected officials are taking advantage of an expected high turnout for the presidential election and the strong economy to propose tax increases — there are a whopping eight tax measures under consideration — as well as policies likely to appeal to the younger, more liberal electorate expected to turn out for the presidential election, like allowing noncitizens to vote in school board elections.

But many of the ballot measures have as much to do with politics as with substance. The mayor and the supervisors use ballot measures as bargaining chips to pressure colleagues to support legislation or a way to raise their profile by championing an issue they think will resonate with the public. They are also the result of a mayor and Board of Supervisors that are finding themselves unable to deal with some issues facing the city.

And with one state Senate seat up for election and six supervisorial seats — the outcomes will determine the balance of power on the Board of Supervisors — those tactics are in overdrive. Several of the proposed ballot measures deal with issues that could be decided by a vote of the Board of Supervisors, but a failure to compromise and a desire to force wedge issues means voters will decide instead.

“It isn’t so much a ballot as a bar exam,” John J. Pitney Jr., a political science professor at Claremont McKenna College, said of San Francisco’s upcoming election. “Direct democracy is one thing, but we do have elected officials for a reason. This is just too much. One can hardly expect voters to study so many issues in any depth.”

The measures — at this point, eight are officially on the ballot but could be withdrawn by Aug. 2 — weigh in on everything from police reform to how the city should deal with its homeless crisis and limitations on the types of campaign committees candidates can have.

Even measures that seem benign have a backstory and have created conflict.

Supervisor Scott Wiener, who is running against colleague Jane Kim for state Senate, introduced a ballot measure that would require the Police Department to operate a neighborhood crime unit of at least 60 officers — a staffing choice usually left to the police chief.

Supervisor Norman Yee said the measure was unnecessary and an abuse of the ballot initiative process.

Supervisor’s complaints

“We don’t need to go to the ballot to create a dedicated unit or to provide property crimes more-focused attention,” Yee said at last week’s board meeting. “The ballot initiative as proposed cannot be amended or changed. The proposal does not even have time to be vetted or discussed. This is a real disservice to the San Francisco people.”

Supervisor Wiener rejected that criticism.

“The fact is that I think the Board of Supervisors is somewhat disconnected from the reality that people are facing, particularly in terms of property crime,” he said. “I have never been one to go to the voters willy-nilly, but in this particular case this is the right issue to send to the voters, because I don’t have confidence the board will get it right.”

That was also Supervisor Mark Farrell’s explanation for why he proposed a measure that would allow the city to remove encampments of homeless people 24 hours after giving notice and an offer of shelter — a proposal the board could have voted on.

“The board is tilted so far left that often common-sense policies don’t make it through anymore,” Farrell said.

Underscoring just how politicized the process is, Farrell’s measure spurred Supervisor Aaron Peskin to introduce his own, competing ballot measure — one the board could have voted on as well. Peskin’s measure would give the city authority to remove encampments only after a 72-hour notice and a 30-day guarantee of shelter while the city develops a plan to move the person into long-term housing.

“This is a symptom of polarization in our society,” said Gabriel Metcalf, executive director of SPUR, an urban planning think tank. “People think it’s morally wrong to compromise with people who disagree with them. When you put something on the ballot, you don’t have to compromise with the other side the way you do in representative democracy. This is a form of self-government that is made for people who don’t want to compromise.”

Kriston Capps, a columnist with the Atlantic’s CityLab, a website that focuses on urban planning and design, said placing such policy measures on the ballot has the unintended consequence of reducing accountability.

Who’s accountable?

“Voters can hold representatives responsible for their votes on laws, which gives representatives an incentive to make sure the law works,” he wrote in an article last month. “Voters are less likely to hold themselves responsible for a failed ballot measure. Even if they did, what would that look like? And what would it matter to the homeless?”

And while the supervisors can vote to change a law if circumstances change, typically ballot measures that voters approve can only be changed by another ballot measure.

For example, one proposed ballot measure this year will ask voters to approve 5 million square feet of commercial development planned for the Hunters Point Shipyard project. The question has to go to the voters because a 1986 ballot measure limited office space approvals in San Francisco to 950,000 square feet per year.

Voters aren’t experts

“Two-thirds of these measures really shouldn’t be seen by voters,” said political consultant David Latterman. “We are not experts on land use, public finance, zoning. ... You want people to vote. You want people to take democracy seriously. But you start throwing all this extra stuff at them — it devalues the whole ballot.”

Of course, superfluous measures are nothing new. Arguably the most famous example was a 2008 initiative to rename a sewage plant after George W. Bush. Sixty-nine percent of voters rejected it.

In contrast, any proposals to raise taxes have to go to the voters. And there are plenty of tax measures this year, one proposed by City College and the rest by supervisors and the mayor.

They include a tax on sugary beverages, a parcel tax for the maintenance of trees and sidewalks, another parcel tax for City College, a tax on gas and non-renewable energy, a three-quarter-cent sales tax for homeless services and transportation, a half-cent sales tax for transportation, a payroll tax on tech companies, and a transfer tax on property sales over $5 million.

All of these in a city with a $9.6 billion budget.

Not even the supervisors are happy about how many revenue measures there are.

“I find it disappointing that we have become more and more reliant on private citizens to take care of public services,” Yee said at last week’s board meeting. “And every time we find ourselves with a difficult budget decision, we have grown accustomed to creating new special taxes to cover the expenses.”

“There is not a lot of strategic thinking about how to move forward on the most important (budget) priorities for the ballot,” said Supervisor John Avalos, who has put his name on two initiatives but expects to eliminate one. “Everybody wants to use the higher turnout for the presidential election to slip their measures in without considering all the other measures that they might care about.”

Avalos warned that if all the revenue measures stay on the ballot, “they are all likely to weigh each other down” and could lead voters to reject them all.

And while the supervisors will probably whittle down the measures in the coming weeks, and some of the public initiatives won’t have the necessary signatures to qualify for the ballot, November is still setting up to be a record-breaking year in terms of city ballot measures. The most in recent history was in 2008, when 22 city initiatives qualified.

As for the notion that all these ballot measures will represent the will of the people? Metcalf said that couldn’t be further from reality.

“The truth is that the vast majority of the voters are not going to know what these measures would really do,” he said. “It is a farce to believe that this is a way to represent the will of the people.”